Paper is one of the handiest and most convenient media for human beings even today when the development of electronics is exploding. As mentioned in the non-patent document 1 paper has several merits: it can be easily viewed; it seldom causes fatigue; and one can add his/her notes or comments on it with freedom. This handiness of paper has long let people clip out interesting pieces of news or photos and paste them on the pages of a notebook with their remarks or comments jotted down nearby.
On the other hand, paper has demerits, too: the larger is the quantity of information, the bulkier is the medium; the required pieces of the information cannot be swiftly accessed; and the remarks or comments written on it cannot be directly utilized by electronic processing means. Especially, with paper medium, it is difficult to edit, for example, to expand or contract the images on it, or to change the color of such images. Further, when the sheets of paper on which collected or edited images are printed are to be circulated, physical distribution means such as handing-over or mailing must be employed, requiring some labor and time. This leads to a problem.
To solve this problem, there has been proposed a method wherein images printed on paper are electronically taken into an electronic computer by the use of an image capturing apparatus such as an optical scanner and then edited electronically by using a graphic software. According to this method, once the images printed on the paper have been taken in the computer, all the editing operations such as expanding and contracting images are performed in the computer. Consequently, it has become possible to duplicate, expand and contract the captured images and even to change the colors of the images. Moreover, it has become possible to electronically organize the edited images as image files and to print those image files, if necessary, onto paper by means of, for example, a printer. Further, it has also become possible to transmit images easily, swiftly and at low cost through electronic image transmission techniques such as attaching images to e-mails and distributing images by means of a Web server. An optical scanner, a CCD camera, or a stand type scanner can be used as an image capturing apparatus in this conventional method.
Non-Patent Document 1: Nikkei Electronics, Jul. 21, 2003, pp. 114-122